Perot Takes Shots at Economic Proposal : Hearing: Texan says Clinton’s plan needs more cuts before more taxes. He scolds Congress for living high life.

WASHINGTON —  Texas billionaire Ross Perot criticized the stimulus side of President Clinton’s economic plan Tuesday, telling Congress that the American people want to see real budget cuts before they are asked to pay more taxes for new spending programs.

Testifying before a special joint congressional committee, the former presidential candidate expounded on the issues that animated his campaign last year, from ethics reform and the influence of lobbyists to the budget deficit and the need to shrink government.

He also exhorted members of Congress to give up their lives of “royal splendor” if they expect Americans to agree to higher taxes.

“Sacrifice should begin at the top. . . . You must eliminate all of the perks and practices that have caused the American people to lose confidence in Congress,” Perot said.

Although asked to make recommendations for congressional reform to the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress, Perot directed most of his remarks at the economy. He said that the economy has been so mismanaged in recent years that “all income taxes west of the Mississippi River are needed just to pay the interest on our national debt.” If the government were a business, he added, “we would be bankrupt right now.”

Stepping up his criticism of Clinton’s economic plan, which he had endorsed earlier as a “step in the right direction,” Perot also took a tougher stand against the stimulus side of the package, saying that “additional federal expenditures to create jobs will not be the answer” to America’s economic problems.

“The American people must have the facts. They want details--not sound bites. And they absolutely do not want tax and spending programs first . . . with only a dream of the possibility of cuts and savings at a later time,” he said.

Criticizing the Administration for presenting some of its proposed tax increases as budget savings, Perot said that ordinary Americans distrust their government because “they are convinced that they are routinely given misleading and distorted” information about the economy. “If it’s spending, let’s say it’s spending. . . . Call a spade a spade and a tax a tax,” he said, adding that Clinton’s proposal to raise taxes on upper-income Social Security recipients is “not a savings but a tax.”

This sort of rhetoric, delivered with the same homespun metaphors and folksy inflection that became Perot’s trademarks during the campaign, obviously delighted the committee’s Republican members, who treated Perot almost reverentially, tailoring their questions in a way that appeared to be designed to solicit his agreement.

Perot received additional encouragement from several hundred supporters, who packed the largest hearing room in the U.S. Senate and gave him a standing ovation when he entered the room. The joint House-Senate panel that heard his testimony was created this year to consider changes in Congress.

Most of the Democrats on the committee, including Sen. David L. Boren (D-Okla.), the panel’s chairman, accorded Perot great respect.

But one member, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), startled the room when he broke with the tenor of the other senators and sharply challenged Perot’s criticism of both Clinton and the 1990 budget agreement that Congress negotiated with the George Bush Administration. Perot had implied that the agreement was a fraud and that lawmakers had deceived the public into believing that they had been serious about reducing the budget deficit.

Noting that Perot had complained that the American people were fed up with sound bites, Reid said that Perot’s testimony was itself “long on sound bites” and short on facts. And, Reid said, the facts as Perot presented them were mostly inaccurate.

“We all have great respect for you, Ross, but maybe you’ve gotten so enthused by all the applause as you walk around the country that you don’t stop to listen to the facts . . . (because) we’ve certainly been given some misleading information by you today,” Reid said, referring specifically to Perot’s characterization of the 1990 budget agreement.

“I listen to a lot of the advice you give, but now let me give you a little,” Reid said as Perot sat in stony silence. “Spend more time checking the facts and less listening to the applause.”

The testy exchange marked the only challenge to what was, in effect, an hourlong scolding by Perot, who used the themes he developed in his campaign to lecture the lawmakers on ways to raise the public’s low level of confidence in Congress.

He bemoaned the size of Congress--300 committees and subcommittees and more than 12,000 staff members--and said that it is time for government, like corporate America, to downsize for greater efficiency. In addition to exhorting lawmakers to cut back further on their official perks, he called on Congress to eliminate wasteful spending.

The themes were in line with the campaign Perot is still waging, even though the election is over, to convince Americans that their government is living dangerously beyond its means. The campaign, which also seems likely to keep the Texas independent alive as a political force, has taken Perot to several states in recent weeks and before forums as diverse as Congress and the Fox-syndicated “Maury Povich Show,” where Perot posed earlier Tuesday with the new Sesame Street character “H. Ross Parrot” and parried questions about his economic ideas.